“We’re building the foundation, so the next step is a franchisee that is aligned with us and vice versa.”
— Brian Mills
BACKGROUND
• In franchising for 10-plus years, Mills is now leading Chop5, which has three units.
• The large knife used at Chop5 is a mezzaluna, which you rock back and forth to cut food quick.
Reporter Megan Glenn asks what makes emerging brand leaders tick—and presents their edited answers in this column in each issue. To suggest a subject, email [email protected].
Why did you decide to become a franchisor?
My partners and I were franchisees with Papa Johns. As you go to conferences and meetings, you walk out sometimes and think, ‘Holy smokes, we can do better than this.’ For like 10 years, we were saying we were going to do our own concept and finally the right time came.
We traveled the country and looked at different segments to see if we could find something to put some passion behind and see it through the franchisee’s eyes. That’s our DNA, that’s who we are. We know what we need to have to be successful, so we wanted to do things a little differently than the typical franchisor.
As a franchise gets old and grows, there’s more of a gap between the franchisee and franchisor. They’re not aligned with the same goals. We’re franchisees. We’re going to have the same goals.
What made you settle on a salad concept?
One of the things we were looking for was where the growth was continuing to go. We’ve been involved in Mexican, pizza, burgers and sandwiches. We thought we could go to where the market is shifting toward and we’ve seen a big change in the last five years, so that was one reason.
There’s a concept in New York called Chop’d. They kind of started the salad concepts, and then there’s Sweetgreen. We liked what they were doing and we took both their concepts to melt together and create ours. We do salads in bowls, hot proteins versus cold, but we really liked the theater aspect of chopping.
When you develop a brand, one of the problems you have is real estate. A lot of the times you’re blocked out of centers if you’re going to open a similar concept. Most centers already have a Mexican concept, a sandwich guy and a pizza guy. I like the idea that we could develop and there’s more options for us because there isn’t usually a salad concept.
We knew once we figured things out and really started to grow, real estate shouldn’t be a factor for us to worry about.
As a new concept, how will you attract franchisees?
Finding the right partners is my first thought. We’re building the foundation, so the next step is a franchisee that is aligned with us and vice versa. They need to be successful and they have to know what they’re doing. That’s my main thing. It’s hard for me to look past that.
But if I have to, I’d like to get those five or so base guys to be able to push the franchising harder and develop the brand. We don’t know at what rate we’re going to grow yet. We don’t want to go too fast or slow, but we want the right people more than anything else.
We’d like to see somebody that’s had a business that’s been able to scale. Somebody who has been able to fight through the challenges. There’s many ways to show a proven track record. It doesn’t have to be in food. If you were a franchisee of another concept and grew, that’s the kind of person we’re looking for.
If you think back to the salads you’ve eaten, and thought about what’s the best salad I’ve ever eaten, most of the time people respond with a chopped salad. When you go to eat that salad and you’re getting every flavor in every bite, it’s a whole different experience. That’s how we’re going to stand out.